Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, broadcasts, and so on. Such networks, which are usually multiple access networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology supported by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). UMTS also supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides higher data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks.
A universal integrated circuit card (UICC) is a smart card that may be used in a mobile equipment in various wireless communication networks, and may include several applications that enable the mobile equipment to access the wireless networks. For example, in 3GPP GSM and UMTS networks the UICC includes a SIM application and/or a USIM application; and in 3GPP2 CDMA networks the UICC includes a CSIM application. In this disclosure, the UICC including one or more applications may be referred to as a SIM.
The mobile equipment (ME) is capable of communicating with the SIM card over a SIM-ME interface, utilizing certain envelope commands. These envelope commands can enable the mobile device to notify events and updates about the ME to the SIM card. For example, if the radio access technology changes, this change is notified to the SIM utilizing an envelope command.
Within an envelope command, there can be several such updates at the same time to notify the SIM, and each of these updates is sent in the order received. That is, the SIM may only be notified of one update at a time, and only after the response for the update is received, is the next update sent. If the SIM replies to an update with a busy response code, the ME will retry the envelope update, and it may be up to 30 seconds of delay until the next envelope is sent to the SIM.